


Are you Jealous?

by Canon_Is_Relative



Category: Almost Human
Genre: Almost Kiss, M/M, Pre-Slash, android prejudice, episode: s1e3 arrythmia, episode: s1e6 arrythmia, grumpy kennex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-11
Updated: 2015-05-11
Packaged: 2018-03-30 01:14:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3917713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Canon_Is_Relative/pseuds/Canon_Is_Relative
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kennex finds out that Dorian has been visiting that DRN unit they met while working the stolen organs case, and confronts him about in it the car.</p><p>
  <i>"What is it you want from him, when he’s not running his cop program?”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Dorian turned in his seat to look at John, tilting his head. “I am allowed to have friends, John.”</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Are you Jealous?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Small_Hobbit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Small_Hobbit/gifts).



“I know what you’re up to.”

 

The words were hanging in the chill air before John had decided to speak. For all he’d been loitering out here, anticipating this confrontation for over an hour, he hadn’t managed to figure out what he actually wanted to say.

 

“Is that so.” Dorian didn’t look surprised to see him, but as he scanned John from head to foot his brows drew together and the irritation John had been nursing for the past hour flared up fresh at the sight of synthetic sympathy.

 

John straightened and pushed himself off the wall, stepping into the harsh light of the hospital parking lot, biting his nails into his palms with the effort of keeping his steps measured and even. He’d gone stiff, waiting in the cold, and on top of that his leg badly needed recalibrating. None of the above were facts that he particularly wanted to broadcast to his partner.

 

“You could have waited for me inside, John. You’re freezing.”

 

“You’re exaggerating,” John grumbled, pushing his hands into his pockets and glaring.

 

Dorian’s lips twitched. “Just running my colloquial routine.”

 

John snorted. Glanced back into the clean, bright interior of the hospital foyer. Somewhere behind those doors DRN 494 was powering down for the night. “He’s a bad influence on you.”

 

“I’m hoping that the fact that I’m a good influence on him makes up for that.”

 

John scoffed. “Come on, Dorian, that’s not how it works. You know it’s not.”

 

Dorian sighed, looking over John’s shoulder at the cruiser parked in the far corner of the visitor lot. “Since you’re here, would you mind giving me a ride back?”

 

“How were you planning to get home if I didn’t show up?” John heard himself a second too late to take it back, and a second too late to look away from the expressions flickering across Dorian’s face — exasperation, amusement, resignation.

 

“I was planning to walk, John. You see, unlike you, I don’t feel the cold. Or get tired. Or have a home that I’m in a hurry to get back to.”

 

“Sorry I asked,” John muttered, unlocking the car.

 

Dorian was quiet while John drove through the dark city. When they slid into the car he’d turned up the heat like the mother hen he was, but then turned to stare out the window as John pointed them towards the station. Last time they’d been here, last time they left this hospital, Dorian had asked to drive. John had even considered it, too, until he saw something in Dorian’s eyes that looked too much like glee for comfort. Dorian hadn’t so much as asked to pick the music since then.

 

“You’re not doing anything I should, ah, know about. Are you?” John asked into the heavy silence, shifting in his seat and glancing to his right. Faint blue tracks flickered across Dorian’s skin and he finally turned to look at John.

 

Dorian lifted an eyebrow. “John, you know very well I am the property of the department. Anything I do can be considered your right to know.”

 

“Okay, well. Anything stupid, then,” John clarified, turning down the heat and facing steadily forward, refusing to rise to the bate. “Anything that’s gonna land your ass in trouble. Or mine.”

 

John could feel Dorian’s gaze on him, saw another flash of blue light in the corner of his eye. “Break a rule or two now and then,” a perfect imitation of John’s own voice teased him from two feet to his right. “It’d look good on you.”

 

It freaked him out when Dorian did that, and he bumped it to the top of his mental to-do list to find out if mimicking an officer was actually legal. For now he contented himself with a glare. “Yeah, and you saw the bill the department had to foot last time you took that advice to heart.  _And_  I still had to pay the ticket you wrote me.”

 

“Still  _have_  to pay it, John. Better get on that, I’d hate for you to be sent to collections.”

 

“And now you’re spying on me. Terrific.”

 

The last time John accused Dorian of checking up on him had warranted no less than a five-minute lecture on the importance of free will and the right to privacy, followed by a few choice comments on his recent downloads — according to Dorian’s programming, John’s musical taste was pedestrian. John had taken that as a compliment and told him as much, and a half hour drive out to a crime scene had been over before they’d even touched on The Who.

 

Now, Dorian was silent, staring placidly out the window. After standing outside in the cold, quiet dark, the heat blasting from the vents and Dorian’s lack of chatter had John itchy and tense and he wished like hell he’d acted on any one of his impulses over the last hour to go home, leave off stalking his DRN and just go home, crack open a bottle, and watch the Knights. Usually Dorian was nonstop Empathy Man, so John felt he had the right to be unnerved by this current display of logical dispassion, and when blue light raced and flickered in his peripheral vision for the third time in as many minutes, John gripped the wheel and gritted out, “Hey. Mr. Spock. I’m not boring you over here, am I?”

 

Dorian looked at him, impassive. “I’m sorry, John. I was replaying our conversation. But I will give you my attention, if you want it.”

 

John sped up, knowing without asking that the conversation in question — and the  _us_  implicit therein — was not Dorian and John. Checking his mirrors, feeling like the right answer was just out of his reach, John ran a yellow light, cursed, and glanced involuntarily at Dorian.

 

“Of course,” Dorian spoke lightly, as though he’d noticed nothing, “recent history would suggest that you prefer it when my attention is directed elsewhere. So unless you have something of importance to discuss, there is something he said to me that seemed to require further analysis and I’d be happy to sit here and process it in silence.”

 

John pulled up outside the station after five minutes of the kind of  _awkward_  that normally would have had Dorian pressing all his buttons on purpose, and cut the engine. Beside him, Dorian made no move to get out of the car.

 

John sucked in a breath, let it out slow. “Is this the first time you’ve gone to see him?”

 

“No.”

 

“Why? What is it you want from him, when he’s not running his cop program?”

 

Dorian turned in his seat to look at John, tilting his head. “I am allowed to have friends, John.”

 

John felt his eyebrows shoot up, incredulity grating in his throat, making his voice come out harsh and too familiar. “Friends? Huh, okay. So, you and Mr. Fix-it. You're friends, that’s great.”

 

“Yes. We are. And he’s calling himself Philip, now.”

 

John blinked. “Philip.”

 

“Yes.” Dorian was holding his gaze, doing that not-blinking thing John wanted to beat out of him. “It’s the one memory he retained, from his time on the force. He saved a young boy named Philip. The interaction, I guess you could say it imprinted on him. It’s how he holds on to his…humanity, for lack of a better word.”

 

“Humanity.”

 

“Yes, John. His connection to the world around him. It’s all he wants. It’s all  _I_  want. You really think he and I would have nothing to talk about?”

 

John slumped back in his seat, rubbing his forehead. Crazy day, that had been. Babysitting an unhinged DRN, looking into his partner’s face on another body. Just when he’d started to sort out his feelings about working with Dorian — about Dorian himself. What the hell had the guy been thinking, bringing along a walking, talking, annoying-as-hell reminder that Dorian wasn’t unique, wasn’t natural? John didn’t realize he was rubbing along the hinge of his leg until he looked up and caught Dorian’s eye. He twisted his face into a sneer, reflexive and uncomfortable as hell, and punched out the first words that made it through the fog in his brain. “Pretty narcissistic if you ask me, cozying up to someone wearing your own face.”

 

“Why, John.” Dorian began to smile, giving in to an outright grin before he finished his question. “Are you jealous?”

 

He felt the words like a kick to the chest and looked away, grinding down on his back teeth. And then Dorian started  _laughing._

 

“Okay, that’s it.” John unstrapped himself and slid across the seat, getting his hands in the front of Dorian’s jacket and pulling him close. "What are you up to, Dorian?"

 

Dorian’s eyes went wide, impossibly bright, maybe, but the expression in them as easy to read as any human’s. Fear. Longing. “I’m about to either punch you or kiss you, John. Do you hear me? I don’t know which, yet, but it’s got to be one or the other. And I think it should be your choice.”

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> for small_hobbit, who prompted John +/ Dorian, "Wait a minute, are you jealous?"
> 
>  
> 
> [Originally posted here](http://canonisrelative.livejournal.com/59206.html)


End file.
